“The Republican party continues to pursue its message and not substance. This is the 31st time we've voted on repealing the health care bill and it's the 31st time that it will fail. Everybody knows that the President is committed to it – he’s not going to sign that bill if it passes; but they also know the Senate is not going to pass that bill. It's about politics and not policy.

This chart from a Dartmouth survey explains the Republican plan to achieve deficit reduction – more specifically, it points out why they don’t have one. As Slate points out, there’s “no Republican support at a grass-roots level for any measure that would lead to substantial deficit reduction.”

Yesterday’s meeting with Grover Norquist to keep Republicans in the fold came as more and more Republicans are starting to admit that we can’t face our fiscal challenges without putting revenues on the table. Our favorite recap, courtesy of TPM:

Who would receive the greatest benefit under Republicans’ tax plan? Not low and middle-income Americans, according to a new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice. According to their report, under the Republicans’ tax plan the poorest 20 percent of Americans would receive an average tax cut of $120 while the richest one percent would receive an average cut of $70,790.

While Republicans are holding middle class tax cuts hostage so they can give tax cuts to the wealthy, they might want to check out today’s National Journal poll. According to the poll results, a majority of Americans oppose extending tax breaks for the wealthy: